“A grandchild!” gasped Mr. Thornton, all manner of strange fancies flitting through his brain. “What can you mean?”
By this time Geraldine appeared, and hastily explaining to him what had occurred, she asked “if he could identify the woman who took care of Helen in New York?”
“Yes, tell her from a thousand, but not now, not now,” and motioning her away, Mr. Thornton covered his face with his hand, and whispered faintly, “My grandchild! My Mildred! That beautiful creature Helen’s child!” and with all his softer feelings awakened, the heart of the cold, stern man yearned toward the young girl he had once affected to despise. “Poor boy,” he said, as he thought of Lawrence, “’twill be terrible to him, for his whole soul was bound up in her. Where is this woman? There may be some mistake. I trust there is, for the young people’s sake,” and the generous feeling thus displayed swept away at once all animosity from the Judge’s heart.
“Describe her first as nearly as you can,” said Geraldine, and after thinking a moment Mr. Thornton replied:
“Tall, grizzly; badly marked with small-pox, and had then one or more long teeth in front, which gave her a most haggish appearance.”
“The same, the same!” dropped from Oliver’s lips, while the Judge, too, responded:
“It’s all almighty queer, but blasted if I believe it!”
At Mr. Thornton’s request, Esther Bennett came in, and the moment his eyes fell upon her, he said:
“’Tis the woman I saw eighteen years ago; I cannot be mistaken in that.”
“Question her,” whispered Geraldine, who seemed quite excited in the matter, and Mr. Thornton did question her, but if she were deceiving them she had learned her lesson well, for no amount of cross-questioning could induce her to commit herself.